Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds • Hacker News Board

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#31

Post by pasiaj » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

I'm looking at the report's table of contents. It's in Finnish. The report includes overviews of multiple studies and provides plenty of valuable insight on multiple themes.

Here's my rough translation:

  1. Introduction
  2. Other basic income studies in other countries
  3. Effects on employment
  4. Perceived health, psychological wellbeing and cognitive performance 
  5. Economic well-being
  6. Experiences on bureaucracy
  7. Basic income and trust
  8. Participant interviews on basic income's effects on employment, participation, autonomy 
  9. BI in media
  10. General populations views on BI and uncertainty relating to income

I'm sure an English language version will be published at some point but I could not find one yet.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#32

Post by mamon » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

UBI will be introduced, just not in the way most of us would like. It will be throught Quantitive Easing, as currently done by FED.

What QE does is - it concentrates the wealth in hands of 0.1% of society. Each financial crisis (2008, 2020) only speeds up this process. Once top 0.1 owns more than, say 90% of wealth we will be back to ancient Rome - "panem et circenses", wealthy people throwing some scraps of wealth towards mases, just enough to keep them from revolting.

Gig economy will also play some role: we are slowly cooking the frog, getting people used to the fact that they don't own their homes, or their cars, they do not have pemanent jobs. Everything they have is a short term rental. They are living using borrowed things, on borrowed time...

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#33

Post by Mirioron » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

luckylion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipients, if not other people? I'm guessing here, but I assume the funding wouldn't be voluntary. In that case, those people's lives are not their own, those people's lives (and the results of them spending parts of their lives at work) are shared. > Now that it's app…

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most…

>The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that.

Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a factory that grows food for example.

Programming, especially web development is a great analogy here. You have tools that do almost all the things you would want a website to do. Why do we need web developers at all then? Because it turns out that connecting everything and fine tuning it for your specific needs is quite difficult.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#34

Post by naavis » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

luckylion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipients, if not other people? I'm guessing here, but I assume the funding wouldn't be voluntary. In that case, those people's lives are not their own, those people's lives (and the results of them spending parts of their lives at work) are shared. > Now that it's app…

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most…

I would say a huge proportion is also caused by moving manufacturing jobs to cheaper countries. It is not just automation.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#35

Post by standardUser » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

nocitrek wrote: post #2

Important thing to keep in mind regarding UBI is that goverment does not generate any money. In order for goverment to give money, it needs to take it from someone. So UBI is just proxy for wealth redistribution. Sure, wellbeing has improved for small group of people, but the question is how scalable UBI is? Remember, road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I wouldn't call trying to build and maintain a prosperous society a "road to hell", but it's true that UBI is just a different form of wealth redistribution. But most nations currently achieve redistribution through a convoluted mosaic of overlapping/competing/intertwined systems, each with their own entrenched bureaucracies and complicated rules. In contrast, a UBI system can be streamlined and efficient and, based on studies like these, even have better outcomes for recipients.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#36

Post by rahimnathwani » Thu, May 07, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

jriot wrote: post #25

BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

The problem I have with studies like this one is that they only measure the effects of getting a stipend during a limited amount of time with a limited amount of people. It's not universal and it's not basic. From a non-scientific view point, of course giving people free money makes them feel better. But from an experimental perspective, they aren't getting the 'full package' of UBI. The participants aren't seeing in…

Correct. An example would be to look around military bases or colleges that cater to the military. Rents are often on par with BAH (Basic Housing Allowance) and college's per credit hour is often near the $750 rate.

A key part of UBI is that the recipient can allocate the funds as they please.

If someone goes to a college that costs $500 per credit hour, can they spent the other $250 on whatever they want?

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#37

Post by skybrian » Thu, May 07, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

The problem I have with studies like this one is that they only measure the effects of getting a stipend during a limited amount of time with a limited amount of people. It's not universal and it's not basic. From a non-scientific view point, of course giving people free money makes them feel better. But from an experimental perspective, they aren't getting the 'full package' of UBI. The participants aren't seeing in…

You can study the effect of taxes and benefits separately since they happen to different people. This won't prove anything about inflation, but there are other things people have been concerned about.

In particular, there are people who say that if you give people money with no strings attached they will just spend it on alcohol or drugs, and it's good to have evidence for a more nuanced view.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#38

Post by nitrogen » Thu, May 07, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #33

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most…

> The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a…

You don't have a factory that grows food for example.

Yet. Modern farms come pretty close, and there are lots of ideas to close the gap.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#39

Post by superkuh » Thu, May 07, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

nocitrek wrote: post #2

Important thing to keep in mind regarding UBI is that goverment does not generate any money. In order for goverment to give money, it needs to take it from someone. So UBI is just proxy for wealth redistribution. Sure, wellbeing has improved for small group of people, but the question is how scalable UBI is? Remember, road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Money is generated as a form of basic income but only for chartered banks.

Money supply is generated by banks creating debt on balance sheets while giving out loans of money they don't actually have (fractional reserve banking) and the same story between these banks and regional government proxy federal banks.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#40

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Thu, May 07, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

luckylion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipients, if not other people? I'm guessing here, but I assume the funding wouldn't be voluntary. In that case, those people's lives are not their own, those people's lives (and the results of them spending parts of their lives at work) are shared. > Now that it's app…

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most…

> "And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible."

More likely, the low hanging fruit of automation has already been plucked bare and the rest will require a century or more to figure out. I certainly don't expect an automated plumber or meat processing worker anytime soon.